English and Hindi poetry and prose, published as well as experimental. Book reviews, essays, translations, my views about the world and world literature, religion, politics economics and India. Formerly titled "random thoughts of a chaotic being" (2004-2013).

TRANSLATIONS (17): Pierre et Jeanand Horla by Guy de Maupassant (translated by Julie Mead) Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett), Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac (Trans. by A. J. Krailsheimer), (Love in Two Languages by Abdelkebir Khatibi), The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarralled with Ivan Nikiforovich by Nikolai Gogol, (Sketches from a Hunter's album: The Complete Edition by Ivan Turgenev, trans. by R. Freeborn), The Nun by Denis Diderot, Respected Sir by Naguib Mahfouz, The Name is Redby Orhan Pamuk, One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta, The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges, Germinal by Emile Zola, Nobody Writes to the Coloneland other stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Afloat by Guy de Maupassant, Utopia by Thomas More.

NOVELS (19): Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore, Burmese DaysandAnimal Farm by George Orwell, A Room with a View by E. M. Forster, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, (The Sound and The Fury by Faulkner), The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, A Golden Age by Tahmina Anam, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, Delhi by Khushwant Singh, Geurrillas by V. S. Naipaul, A Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, Awakening by Kate Choplin, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, Persuasion by Jane Austen, Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya.

NON-FICTION (9):The Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Letters Between a Father and Son by V. S. Naipaul, The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen, A Collection of Essays by George Orwell, The Open Mind by Robert J. Oppenheimer, Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks, Representative Men by Emerson, King of Bollywood Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema by Anupama Chopra.

ENGLISH POETRY (34+4):The Book for my Brother by Tomaz Salamun, Mystery, So Long by Stephen Dobyns, Sources andThe Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977by Adrienne Cecile Rich, Rose and Books of my Nights by Li-Young Lee, Poems by Anna Akhmatova, New Hampshire by Robert Frost, Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems and Opened Closed Open by Yehuda Amichai, An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems by Eavan Boland, Gunga Din and other favorite poems by Rudyard Kipling, The Painted Veil by Agha Shahid Ali, The Second Night of the Spirit by Bhisham Bhewani, As I Walked out one Evening: Songs, Ballads, Limericks and Light Verse by W. H. Auden, The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poetry ed. by Jeet Thayil, (Selected Poems by Chaucer), Jersey Rain by Robert Pinsky, Canvas by Adam Zagajewski, That Little Something by Charles Simic, (The Porcupine's Kisses by Stephen Dobyns), Beowulf (Trans. by Seamus Heaney), The Angel Knocking on a Heaven's Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez by Hafez (Translated by Robert Bly), A Season in Granda by Federico Garcia Lorca (trans. by Christopher Maurer), Tears and Laughter by Khalil Gibran, Illiad by Homer (trans. by Robert Fagles), A Tree Within and A Draft of Shadows by Octovio Paz, Tao Te Ching by Lao Tze, Li Po & Tu Fu: Poems Selected and translated with and introduction and notes by A. Cooper, Li Po and Tu Fu, The History of Forgetting by Lawrence Raab, Erotic Poems (trans. by David Luke) and Roman Elegies and other poems and epigrams (trans by Michael Hamburger) by Goethe, The Burden of Speech by Travis Wayne Denton.

Diaries of a Young Poet by Ranier Maria Rilke, (The Makingof a Poem by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland), This Craft of Verse by Jorge Luis Borges, The Monster Loves His Labyrinth: Notebooks by Charles Simic.

POPULAR SCIENCE (4): A Study of Splashes by A. M. Worthington, Moments of Vision and Stopping Time by Edgerton, Rheology: An Historical Perspective by R. I. Tanner and K. Walters.

Favorite reads of the year (Fiction / Novels /Short Stories)
1. Pierre et Jean and Afloat by Guy de Maupassant (French): Short novels, which are constructed with a lot of insight and intensity.
2. Respected Sir by Naquib Mahfouz (Arabic): A poor man educates himself and works tirelessly, somewhat devilishly and deviously at time, sacrificing love and friendship, to rise through the rank. Short book.
3. The Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (Turkish): Western paintings and Eastern colors, Eastern painting and infidel styles of the West; a discourse on art and religion, buried within a love story and murder mystery set in sixteenth century Istanbul. (I have decided to call the novelist my friend, and address him on a first name basis. Orhan, I must tell you that I enjoyed your lectures in Harvard this year).
4. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (Spanish): In Borges, I find erudition, invention, citation, scholarship, mystery, myth, Eastern and Western cultures and skill with imagination, words and ideas woven into a labyrinth that engages every element of your self. I will read everything by him.
5. Germinal by Emile Zola (French): The book abounds in unforgettable coalmine & crowd scenes, dark and insightful sections on socialism and class struggle, and shockingly sensuous paragraphs where wild desire and free sex continue in spite of the turn of events in the background. Heroism, romance, coming of age, sexuality, and humanity are all invoked by this writer and evoked by this novel.
6. Burmese Days, Animal Farm & Collection of Essays by Orwell (English): Twentieth century is chronicled and critiqued best by this author, whose every essay is both educational and inspiring. Burmese days is recommended to anyone who wishes to familiarize himself with India under colonial rule; Animal Farm is a parable that shows how communism is destroyed by its practitioners.
7. Delhi by Khushwant Singh (English): The novel is a mixed-bag of riches, quite like the city. Narratives set in Aurangzeb's time, Mir's life, Zafar's time and in twentieth century alone should make this a book worth celebrating. (I have posted a longer review elsewhere).
8. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (English): An adventure story, set in North India. Full of maxims and one liners that capture daily conversations of Indians too well. It has an unforgettable cast of characters, and must be used as an instruction manual by writers who want to see India from within.
9. A Room with a View by EM Forster (English): A classic that takes you through the touristy town of Florence, the stuffiness of British higher society, a love story with odd-ball hero and confused heroine and more in one short and pleasant novel.
10. Meri Priya Kahaniyan by Yashpal (Hindi): Chekov, Maugham, HH Munro, O Henry, Manto, Maupussant, Zola, DH Lawrence coexist as one writer in Yashpal. I plan to read everything he wrote, implying many novels and many collections of short stories.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga has already won the Man Booker Prize, and it is being hailed universally by the critics for its virtues in presenting a narrative quite different from the Bollywood capers and the modern Indian English fiction. In the wake of some well-deserved praise, my biased review might appear like an afterthought, examining a foregone conclusion. My bias rises from my familiarity with characters like Balram Halwai, and from my reverence for uncelebrated works of Indian fiction that present the alternative reality of present day India. Reading the novel left me quite dissatisfied, and this is an exposition of the reason why.

The basic storyline of the novel can be summarized as follows. Balram Halwai grows up in a poor and remote village and ends up working as the driver for America returned Ashok. Incidentally Ashok is from the family of landlords who run or ruin the life of Balram's fellow villagers. Even though Ashok treats the Balram quite well compared to how servants and drivers are treated by other people, Balram siezes an opportunity to murder his master and run-off with money to become a rich businessmen. The story of Balram's journey from a village to city, the murder and his transformation into a entrepreneur is retold in form of letters that Balram writes in a course of seven nights. The letters are addressed to Chinese Premier and are laced with a dark wit and provocative confessions.

The novel succeeds in chartering into a territory unfamiliar and hence exotic for Western audiences, for Adiga chooses a character from lower classes and makes him into a success story. But likewise, the novel fails in providing a deep or authentic representation of his protagonists to anyone who is remotely familiar with the cultural-, social-, caste- & religion- based daily chaos of India. In fact, the parable is replete with the cliched dialogues, observations and methods which are synonymous with most Indian movies. These too describe the rise of a virtual nobody from village or slums to riches. The only thing missing here is a romance angle, song and dance situations and the victory of good over evil in the final scene. Further, except maybe for Balram, most characters are caricatures, two-dimensional beings, who perform their parts again like the underdeveloped, underused casts in desi movies.

The fact that Adiga creates this alternate universe quite cleverly is clear from the outset, but if his representation actually captures injustices or corrupt world ,can be judged best by us who have risen from it. Unfortunately, my assertion that most of the celebrated Indian writers never lived in real India or in the villages, towns and slums (where the poor and middle classes live), applies equally well to Aravind. For me, White Tiger is a black and white, blurred montage of shots from a distant observer. These are accompanied by a narrative that in spite of its comic and creative content, fails to describe what is actually happening. But I am convinced now that to somebody who has access only to this montage, the description provides a wonder and entertainment characteristic of Marco Polo's adventures.

The question "if not "White Tiger" than what" is not a difficult one to answer. Premchand, Yashpal, Renu, Mahashweta Devi, Dharamveer Bharati, Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Vijayan, Sadat Hasan Manto, Tagore, etc form a long list of writers who have explored the fervent and follies of Indian psyche, philosophy, politics and religion. I thought of the "shrub" in Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul, each time I saw Balram's region denoted as "Darkness", and I thought it unusual that two divers in Delhi run into each other at every possible parking lot (It requires a suspension of disbelief matched by similar plots in many Bollywood movies) . I agree with the book stub that calls it "amoral, irreverent", but I cannot agree with its being called "deeply endearing" for I still preserve my sensibility that shocking and irreverent is not a sure sign of being extraordinary. The manifold of contradictions that exist in India requires a canvass with more elements than are present in White Tiger, and to make it palatable is indeed a task that requires more than a paper tiger!

Incidentally most of the entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and politicians in current India do rise from very ordinary families. While some may have followed the path exemplified by Balram, there is a significant fraction who escaped through education. While Naipaul did not grow up in India, his House for Mr Biswas contains characters and circumstances that are surprisingly accurate their portrayal of daily life of a large majority of Indians, and there too the escape occurs through education. Rushdie manages to use metaphor and magical realism to assimilate the commotion of Indian existence, but his descriptions do not usually touch the ordinary man.

While White Tiger manages to reveal the dark matter in the cosmos of Indian reality, its exposition, extent and complexity requires the understanding, humanity, attachment and maturity absent in this novel. To win a prize or write a popular book (for Western audiences) is one thing, to create a masterpiece worth universal respect quite another. No wonder most Indians bashed the book in their reviews in amazon and elsewhere, while the Westerners embraced it. For me the scary thing is that an equivalent imaginary novel, which would win similar acclaim in many developing countries (especially in the Middle East), will portray a driver Balram Halwai in United States, making it big (in spite of racial/religious/imperialist insults) by use of similar murder of a Christian, White guy: only the names of the cities and characters need to be changed. Of course, Balram Halwai, of US will also type it as a series of letters to the Chinese Premier. Perhaps that will make for an entertaining read, though I doubt if it will win a Man Booker Prize or such acclaim in the West. My apologies, I won't venture to compare author of White Tiger or the similar, imaginary novel, to Gorky, Gogol or Dostoevsky!

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Naomi Shihab Nye's collection contains sixty poems about Palestinians and Middle East, about love and longing for lost and imaginary homelands. The poems are fragrant with spices of the Middle-East, flavors of figs and olives, and served with a tenderness of a grandmother talking to a grandchild, a five year old to his mother, an aged man to his beloved he unites with after a lifetime. In the world torn by religious and political conflicts, these poems represent an oasis of hope. It is the humanity of these verses, that leaps from the page like the memory of nineteen varieties of gazelle described in the title poem.

The poems assume special significance in the context of post-September 11 world, for they contain a platter of understanding and taste served to assuage our need to be comforted. The solace is brought in by the mint green language of a poet born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. Perhaps the unique identity of Nye offers her perspectives about the Arab East and American West which her creativity has shaped into a narrative that offers respite from the reactionary rhetoric that dominates our daily thinking and actions.

As an Indian residing in America, I sense a brotherhood with Nye's characters, who chase the voices, flavors, visions, music and familiarity that maps their nostalgic world. As a poet with Indian heart and Americanized mind, I find Nye, like Agha Shahid Ali, present our cultural and emotional duality in a lyric that is both powerful and poignant. The tapestry of inheritance of the East is laced with tales quite unknown in the West, and this wealth can nourish many a chasms that exist between the material and spiritual. It is voices like Amichai's and Nye's that remind us that the transcendental humanity within us can help us to outlive the wounds inflicted by the fanatic forces everywhere.

Karnak Cafe by Naquib Mahfouz is a hundred page socio-political thriller. Mahfouz's characters gather together in Karnak Cafe, run by a former belly dancer. The regular customers include old men like the narrator, who remember Egypt before 1952 revolution and remember the belly dancer in her prime. The regular customers also include three university students, who are rooted in the present, without a bittersweet nostalgia for past that old people carry within them. Together the cast converses about religion, love, politics and forms the family of Karnak Cafe.

Then one day the students disappear, and when they return, their selves are transformed irreversibly. While the government throws them into prison again and again, their outside world is transformed by the 1967 war. Many years later, the narrator reconstructs the background stories of the three students, who loose their idealism, innocence and zest for life in face of harsh tortures inflicted on them. In a chilling climax, the torturer of these students joins the community of Karnak Cafe, and presents his own disillusionment with the system.

The complexity of times is captured brilliantly in the narrative that follows the personal stories of the protagonists. By presenting social, political and economic tragedies through prism of personalities, Mahfouz creates a compelling and unforgettable novella. The nightmarish Karnak Cafe is a must read, contemporary novel which for me ranks along with Blindness by Saramago and Toni Morrison novels.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

TRANSLATIONS (18)Torrents in Spring and First Love by Ivan Turgenev, The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky (trans. by Constance Garnett), Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (trans. by Douglas Charmee), Slowness by Milan Kundera, Chitra by Rabindranath Tagore (One Act Play), Swann’s Way by M. Proust, The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk, The Trolley by Claude Simon (trans. by Richard Howard), Ramayana by C. Rajagopalachari (based on texts by Valmiki, Kamban and Tulsidas), Mahabharata by C. Rajagopalachari (based on Sanskrit original by Ved Vyas), The Key Witnesses: the Younger Slovene Prose at the Turn of the Millennia by Various, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami, Diary of a Madman and other stories by Nikolai Gogol, Seven Novels by Anton Chekov, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Satre, Karnak Cafe by Naquib Mahfouz

NOVELS (20):Witches by Roald Dahl, Through the looking glass by Lewis Carroll, I, Claudius by Robert Grave, The Painted Veil by W. S. Maugham, Men without Women by Ernest Hemmingway, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, O Pioneers by Willa Cather, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Human Comedy by William Saroyan, Fury and The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, Lord Jim by Joseph Conard, Buddha by Deepak Chopra, River Sutra by Geeta Mehta, The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh, Chrome Yellow by Alduos Huxley, Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur, White Tiger by Arvind Adiga, Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile, Waiting for Mahatma by R. K. Narayan.

NON-FICTION (7):The Art of Fiction by John Gardner, My experiments with truth by Mahatma Gandhi, Letter to a Hindu and (The Kingdom of God is Within You) by Leo Tolstoy, A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, Plato's Republic, Essays on Literature by W. S. Maugham,

ENGLISH POETRY (39+5):God Particles by Thomas Lux, Rilke on Love and other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations by Ranier Maria Rilke and John M. L. Wood, Sixty Poems by Charles Simic, Valentines by Ted Kooser, The Complete Poems of Cavafy by C. P. Cavafy (trans. by Rae Dalven), Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire (Trans. by Louise Varese), Like This by Rumi (Trans. by Coleman Barks), Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English edited by Agha Shahid Ali and Sarah Suleri Goodyear, Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop,!!! Faust by Goethe (Trans. By Kauffmann), Selected Poems by Francis Ponge, The Girl with Bees in her Hair by Elenor Rand Wilner, Velocities by Stephen Dobyns, 19 Varieties of gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye, Save the Last Dance: Poems by Gerald Stern, Dig Safe by Stuart Dischell, The Gift Poems by Hafiz(Trans. by Daniel Ladinsky), Hafiz of Shiraz: Selections from his poems (Trans. by Hermam Bicknell, in 1875), Poems of Akhmatova: Izbrannye Stikhi (Trans. by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward), The Fourtieth Day by Kazim Ali, What Narcissism means to Me Tony Hoagland, Sin by Forugh Farrokzad (Trans. by Sholeh Wolpe), Poem of the Deep Song by Federica Garcia Lorca (Tans by Ralph Angel), Bye for now by Lorraine Mariner, Travels and Tranquilities: Questions and Answers by Yehuda Amichai, Half-Inch Himalayas, Rooms are Never Finished, Call me Ishmael Tonight, The Country without Post office, Nostalgists Map of Americaand Rebel's Silhouette (Translations of verses by Faiz Ahmed Faiz) by Agha Shahid Ali, Kabir by Robert Bly

Elements of Poetry by Robert Scholes, Primer for Poets by Karl Shapiro, Poetry and Mathematics by S. Buchanan, The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser, Best Words, Best Order by Stephen Dobyns,

PHILOSOPHY (5):Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig, The Vedanta Philosophy and Lectures from Colombo to Almora by Swami Vivekananda, (The Six Systems of Hindu Philosophy by Friedrich Max Muller), (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) by Friedrich Nietzsche

POPULAR SCIENCE (7):A History of Hindu Chemistry (From earliest times to the middle of sixteen century A. D.) by Praphulla Chandra Ray, Molecular Reality (A Perspective on the Scientific Work of Jean Perrin) by Mary Jo Nye, Universal Foam: Exploring the Science of Nature’s Most Mysterious Form by Sidney Perkowitz, Patterns in Nature by Peter S. Stevens, On Growth and Form by D’Arcy Thompson (abridged by J. T. Bonner), Atoms by Jean Perrin, Cohesion: A Scientific History of Intermolecular Forces by J. S. Rowlinson

TRANSLATIONS (11): The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, Candide by Voltaire, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostovesky, The Book of Laugher and Forgetting and by Milan Kundera, The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol, A Day in Spring by Ciril Kosmac, Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac, Cries in the Drizzle by Yu Hua, Snow by Orhan Pamuk

The Art of Novel by Milan Kundera, A Stranger in the Land: Jewish Identity beyond Nationalism by Daniel Cil Brecher

NOVELS (30):An Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Catalina and Husband and Wives by W. Somerset Maugham, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Vanity Fair by W. M. Thackerey, Swami and Friends and Malgudi Landscapes by R. K. Narayan, Where Angels Fear to Tread and Howards End by E. M. Forster,!!! Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Daisy Miller and Washington Square by Henry James, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, As I Lay Dying by W. Faulkner, Ganesha Goes to Lunch by Kamala K. Kapur!!!!, The End of an Affair by Graham Greene, Matilda by Roald Dahl, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farookhi, The Third Policeman by Frank O’Brian, Little Woman by Lousie Mary Alcott,

Arms and the Man and Man and Superman by G. B. Shaw*, Much Ado About Nothing and Tempest by William Shakespeare,*

NON-FICTION (5):Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster, The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler, Becoming Jane: The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen by Anne Newgarden, In Defense of Elitism by William A. Henry III, The End of Education by Neil Postman

ENGLISH POETRY (44=38+6):Night Mowing by Chard deNiord, The Love Poems of Rumi ed. by Deepak Chopra, Odes to Common Things * (trans. by Ken Krabbenhoft), Winter Garden (trans. by W. O’ Daly) and Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (trans. by Williams) by Pablo Neruda**, Street of Clocks, Split Horizon, Greatest Hits, The Blind Swimmer and New and Selected Poems by Thomas Lux, !!!!The 64 Sonnets by John Keats, The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam trans. by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs, The Captain’s Verses (trans. Donald D. Walsh) by Pablo Neruda, Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda trans. by Margaret S. Peden, Collected Poems by Philip Larkin, Sonnets to Orpheus by Ranier Maria Rilke, You and Yours by Naomi Shihab Nye, Selected Poems: WB Yeats, Selected Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Selected Poems of Ranier Maria Rilke ed. & trans. by Robert Bly,!!! The Poetry of Pablo Nerudaby Pablo Neruda and Ilan Stavans,Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God trans. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Marie Macy, Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, 100 Great Poems of the Twentieth Century ed. by Mark Strand, My Noiseless Entourage: Poems and The Voice at 3:00 A. M.: Selected Late and New Poems by Charles Simic, Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova, The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology (Dover) by Faubian Bowers, Lyrical Ballads by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, Found in Translation (Hewbrew Poems) ed. by Richard Friend, Time and Materials by Robert Hass, A Poet to his Beloved by W. B. Yeats, The Essential Rilke by Ranier Maria Rilke (trans. by Galway Kinnel and Hannah Liebmann), The 100 best poems of all time ed. by Leslie Pockell, Selected Poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (trans. by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi, S. J.), Selected Poems by Robert Frost, In Search of Duende by Federico Garcia Lorca, Norman Thomas Di Giovanni and Christopher Maurer, Essay on Rime: with Trial of a Poet (Poets on Poetry) by Karl Shapiro and Robert Phillips

Best Words, Best Order by Stephen Dobyns, The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky, Poetry and commitment by Adrienne Rich, Three Indian Poets - Second Edition – Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes and A. K. Ramanujam by Bruce King, Letters to a Young Poet by Ranier Maria Rilke (trans. by Stephen Mitchell), The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, 3rd Ed. by Lewis Turco.

POPULAR SCIENCE (10):History of Theories of Rain by W. E. Knowles Middleton, Self Made Tapestry by P. Ball, I am OK, you are OK by Thomas Harris, Sky in a bottle by Peter Pesic, Investigations on the Theory of Brownian Motion by Albert Einstein, Clouds in a Glass of Beer and What Light through Yonder Window Breaks by Craig F. Bohren, Optics made Clear by William L. Wolfe, Rainmakers: American “Pluviculture” to World War II by Clark C. Spence, Visualized Flow Ed. by Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers!!

Vivek is a published poet. He reads & writes in Hindi and English. His poetry and essays in English are published in Poetry, Atlanta Review, The Cortland Review, Kartika
Review, Bateau, Muse India, Reading Hour, etc. He contributes columns and verses to Divya
Himachal (Hindi newspaper in India). Vivek's first collection, "Saga of a Crumpled Piece of
Paper" (63 poems, English, Writers
Workshop, Calcutta) was published in 2009.

Vivek spend his childhood in Himachal Pradesh and undergraduate years in IIT Delhi. He pursued a doctoral degree at Georgia
Tech, Atlanta (2003-2008) and he was a postdoctoral research associate in
Mechanical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge (MA) (2008-2012). He currently resides in Chicago.